1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content reproduction device having a television broadcast reception function and an Internet connection function, and capable of reproducing a content from television broadcast and the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
The television broadcast has been making transition from analog broadcast to digital broadcast utilizing the moving picture experts group (MPEG 2) compression, and television receivers which can be connected to the Internet and allow a user to view contents both from the Internet and from broadcast (hereinafter, referred to as IPTV) have been developed.
The simplest configuration of the IPTV independently handles respective contents from different media. For this configuration, it is preferred that the input mode be switched between a broadcast signal reception mode and an Internet reception mode, and, in each of the modes, only contents available in media corresponding to the mode be selectable, for example.
On the other hand, in terms of user's convenience of operability, a configuration of integrating contents from different media is preferred to the configuration of independently handling respective contents from different media. Various IPTVs integrating and handling contents from different media have conventionally been proposed. For example, a system for selectively displaying an Internet content and a television program on a screen, in which web pages are displayed on a graphical user interface in a format similar to the channels of the conventional television broadcast, has been proposed. Moreover, an information display device for seamlessly displaying digital satellite service (DSS) programs, web pages, and local (terrestrial) broadcast channels has been proposed.
As a result of the recent growth in population of the broadband, contents in the high definition (HD) image quality on the Internet become available for viewing, and there may occur a situation in which the same content as that of the television broadcast can be viewed on the Internet with higher image quality. In other words, there may occur a situation in which while a movie broadcast as one program of the television broadcast is in standard definition (SD) image quality of 480 vertical pixels, the same movie available via the Internet is in HD image quality of 720 or 1,080 vertical pixels.
Even if the conventional IPTV is configured so that contents integrated from different media are handled and television broadcast channels and Internet channels in a channel list can be seamlessly selected, a search operation such as channel surfing is necessary for determining whether the same content exists both in a television broadcast channel and in an Internet channel. As a result, if a user neglects such a search operation, the user may view a content from the television broadcast without knowing that the same content is available in higher image quality on the Internet.